Silver is best known for correctly predicting the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, the latter while under attack by Republicans certain Mitt Romney was about to defeat the incumbent, Barack Obama.

But Silver got his start, sort of, writing for Baseball Prospectus and coming up with the PECOTA statistics analysis system. He then contributed political statistical analysis to Daily Kos under the name Poblano before finally revealing his identity and then starting the 538 blog for the New York Times.

Since the election, Silver has said in several interviews that he wanted to return to doing more work in sports. For we numbers guys, the Silver hire is a huge get for ESPN and a boost for Olbermann, whose show starts August 26.

And let’s just put it this way: The Olbermann-Silver combination is a far cry from First Take.